House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the twenty-second in a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

This program continues examination of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Eventually, the collaborationist mainstream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the committee. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post began the assault, which quickly drew blood. . . .

. . . . The only time he ever had his credentials questioned was during the six months he agreed to swerve as counsel to the HSCA. And that is simply because he was going to supervise a real investigation of the JFK case. Yet, the same thing happened to him as happened to Jim Garrison. In fact, like Garrison, Sprague was also even accused of being in bed with the Mafia. When the first press attacks began. HSCA staffer Chris Sharrett remembers thinking, ‘It’s Garrison all over again.’ Or, as Joe Rauh, who knew Sprague from Philadelphia and had a front row seat to the controversy in Washington said, ‘You know, I never thought the Kennedy case was a conspiracy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.’ With Sprague’s resignation, the House Select Committee survived. The interim Chief Counsel was Tanenbaum with Al Lewis, a friend and colleague of Sprague’s as his deputy. . . .

In the interim, between Sprague’s resignation and the ascension of G. Robert Blakey to the Chief Counsel position, George DeMohrenschildt died of a shotgun wound to the head.

DeMohrenschildt: was part of the family that managed the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Konstantin Maydell, in charge of Abwehr operations in the United States for a time (Abwehr was German military intelligence); was a suspected Nazi spy in World War II; was an associate of George H.W. Bush; was a longtime CIA asset; was a petroleum geologist.

DeMohrenschildt implemented the Oswalds’ introduction to the White Russian milieu in Dallas. Of particular significance for our purpose is the fact that he made contact with the couple at the suggestion of J. Walton Moore, who was the primary CIA officer in the Dallas area!

The White Russians appeared to be working to separate Marina and Lee, and were involved in handling Marina after the assassination.

A long-standing CIA asset, DeMohrenschildt had worked with the agency on numerous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and elsewhere. Suspected of having spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Station (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohrenschildt was the cousin of Baron Kontantin Maydell, who oversaw Abwehr operations in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was German military intelligence.)

As discussed in FTR #712, we highlighted DeMohrenschildt’s links to former CIA director George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA headquarters is named. In that same program, we covered Bush’s involvement in the JFK assassination. LIke DeMohrenschildt and many of the White Russians who associated with the Oswalds in the Dallas area, Bush had roots in the petroleum industry.

Noteworthy in the context of Oswald’s presence in Dallas, is that this alleged traitor was employed by Jaggars, Chiles and Stovall, a firm that did classified work for the military, including projects associated with the U-2 spy plane! That the “traitor” Oswald, who offered to disclose classified information about the U-2 and U.S. aviation operations to the Soviets could be employed by such a firm is unthinkable, IF we are to take the official version of Oswald at face value.

Ultimately, DeMohrenschildt handed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quaker liberals” Michael and Ruth Paine.

DeMohrenschildt’s death was ruled a suicide, but the circumstances surrounding his demise are noteworthy.

At the time he died, DeMohrenschildt was networking with a Dutch journalist named Willem Oltmans, who began spreading disinformation after DeMohrenschildt’s demise. DeMohrenschildt was also networking with journalist Edward Epstein, who pressed the “Soviets did it” meme for a time and whose behavior vis a vis DeMohrenschildt is questionable.

Prior to his death, DeMohrenschildt was undergoing psychiatric treatment, apparently including electro-shock therapy, from a Dallas physician named Mendoza. DeMohrenschildt’s widow thinks the treatments may have had something to do with her husband’s death.

The physical evidence in connection with DeMohrenschildt’s death suggests the distinct possibility of foul play.

. . . . Even though a coroner’s inquest ruled his death as self-inflicted, there are some serious questions about DeMohrenschildt’s demise. First, according to the crime scene report and the autopsy, there was not any exit wound to the rear of the skull. Yet DeMohrenschildt allegedly placed a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It’s true that shotgun shells disperse more quickly than jacketed bullets. But his shot was almost within contact distance. Neither the maid nor the cook heard the shotgun blast, even though both women were right below the room that DeMohrenschildt was in at the time. The police also had problems explaining the blood spatter on the wall. When a blood spurt hits a flat surface, it creates a different pattern than if it hits a surface that is perpendicular to it. In looking at photographs of the spatter pattern, it appears that the bathroom door was closed at the time the shooting took place, because the blood pattern looked continuous. But the police said this was not the case. The bathroom door was open at the time. The testifying officer demeaned the jurors for asking this question and then jumped to a new topic. But it would appear that someone altered the crime scene afterwards. The final oddity about the scene is the position of the weapon after death. It fell trigger side up, parallel to the chair DeMohrenschildt was in, with the barrel resting at his feet and the butt of the rifle away from him and to his left. The police had a problem with this issue and so did the inquest jurors. As author Jerry Rose has noted, this strange positioning of the rifle suggests it was “placed” by someone.

Ms. Tilton was not at home at the time of DeMohrenschildt’s death. But she had left strict instructions for the maid to record her favorite TV programs. The home had an alarm system which caused a quiet bell to ring, anytime an outside door or window was opened. During the hearing, the tape of the program was played. When it was the alarm bell went off and then the gun blast was heard. . . .

Subsequently, writer Jerry Policoff felt that Oltmans was threatening him and that the Dutch journalist was a malefactor.

An initial candidate to replace Richard Sprague was former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who had been JFK’s Secretary of Labor.

. . . . Former Justice of the Supreme Court Arthur Goldberg was one candidate who turned down the job. Al Lewis had talked Goldberg into filling the position. But Goldberg had one reservation. He wanted to know if the CIA would cooperate with him. Lewis suggested calling up Stansfield Turner, President Carter’s CIA Director. So Lewis called him and told him Goldberg wanted to talk with him. He put Goldberg on the line and the candidate asked Turner if he could guarantee the Agency would cooperate if he became Chief Counsel. A long silence ensued. It got so long and so quiet that Goldberg turned to Lewis and said, ‘I’m not sure if he’s there anymore.’ Lewis suggested that he say something. So Goldberg asked if he was still on the line and Turner said he was. Goldberg asked him for an answer to his question. Turner said, ‘I though my silence was my answer.’ . . . .

Eventually, the HSCA settled on G. Robert Blakey as Chief Counsel and Richard (Dick) Billings as a key aide. Both had been involved with tarring Jim Garrison with the Mafia brush in a 1967 Life Magazine series.

. . . . But [David] Chandler’s most serious blast against Garrison and his inquiry was a two-part article written for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the September 1 and September 8 issues of the magazine. The pieces masqueraded as an expose of Mafia influence in large cities in America at the time. But the real target of the piece was not the mob, but Garrison. The idea was to depict him as a corrupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of nebulous ties to the Mafia and Carlos Marcello. There were four principal participants in the pieces: Chandler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey. Smith was the actual billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very likely that the Bureau was the Bureau was the originating force behind the magazine running the piece. . . .

. . . . It was the work of Chandler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Kerry Thornley, which was the basis of the completely phony concept that Garrison was somehow in bed with the Mafia and his function was to steer attention from their killing of Kennedy. . . .

Blakey:

1.–Effectively eclipsed the New Orleans leads developed by Jim Garrison.
2.–Bought into the Magic Bullet Theory.
3.–Eclipsed evidence about “Oswald’s” sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depository.

Most importantly, Blakey gave the intelligence services the right to veto what information would go into the committee’s report.

” . . . . When Robert Blakey took charge of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he agreed to do something that Richard Sprague would not. In return for access to classified materials, members and employees f the committee signed agreements pledging not to disclose any information they garnered while doing their work. Then, when Blakey, Gary Cornwell, and Dick Billings edited the report and volumes, the agencies they made agreements that [the agencies] were allowed to veto what information was included in the published volumes. This is the reason that the HSCA report on Mexico City–assembled by two law students of Blakey’s from Cornell–was not part of the published volumes in 1979. For when it came time to vet the report for release, Blakey, Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway met with the CIA representatives. The Agency made so many objections, it took four hours to get through the first two paragraphs. The report is over 300 pages long. It was therefore classified until the ARRB was created. And then it had to go through several reviews. But even today, an annex to the report, ‘Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA’ has not been released. This long classified report confirms that, as Garrison wrote in 1968, the Commission version of what happened in Mexico City was deliberately covered in mist. . . .

Near the end of his investigation, Blakey was on the receiving end of some questionable behavior from CIA liaison Regis Blahut:

. . . . Toward the end, when CIA liaison Regis Blahut was caught mishandling Kennedy’s autopsy photos while they were secured in a safe, the Agency offered Blakey four ways to do an inquiry of what had happened. The main object being to see if Blahut was part of a larger operation to undermine the HSCA. One option was to do the inquiry through the D.C. police, another was through the FBI, and the third was an internal HSCA inquiry. The last was to have the CIA do it. Even though the Agency officers at this meeting strongly encouraged Blakey not to choose them to do the investigation, he still did. The reporting officer, Haviland Smith, made the only conclusion he could from this meeting He wrote that his interpretation of what Blakey wanted was the Agency ‘to go ahead with the investigation of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean bill of health for the CIA.’ Which, of course, they did despite the fact that Blahut flunked three polygraph tests. When the author talked to HSCA staffer Eddie Lopez about this matter, I told him that in reading these memoranda, I was struck by how friendly Blakey was with these CIA officers. That is, what a seemingly easy rapport he had with them. I said, ‘You know, Eddie he talks to them . . . “Lopez interrupted me in mid-sentence and completed the thought for me: ‘He talks to them like he’s one of them.’ . . . .”

We note that, during the early phase of the HSCA’s investigation, George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA. George Joannides, who managed the DRE for CIA, was the Agency’s main liaison to the HSCA.

House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the twenty-first in a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

This program undertakes examination of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The HSCA coalesced after a showing of the Zapruder film on television cued a dramatic increase in people who were interested in the JFK assassination. Representative Tom Downing of Virginia was instrumental in realizing the project.

Ultimately, respected Pennsylvania prosecutor Richard Sprague became the committee’s Chief Counsel, recruiting skilled aides like the late Gaeton Fonzi and Robert Tanenbaum. Networking with, among others, Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, Sprague, Tanenbaum, Fonzi et al quickly concluded that the Warren Commission was covering up the assassination and highlighted the ridiculous nature of CE399–the so-called “Magic Bullet,” which is the evidentiary core of the Warren Commission’s thesis.

Initially, the HSCA began doing some serious work, investigating and analyzing the New Orleans connections that Garrison investigated. In addition to the Shaw, Banister, Ferrie Oswald relationships, the role of David Phillips, aka “Maurice Bishop,” became a substantive focal point of their work.

Gaeton Fonzi’s work for the committee focused on:

1.–CIA officer Bernardo DeTorres’ professional career, including his work with Mitchell Werbell.
2.–David Phillips/”Maurice Bishop.”
3.–The Rose Cheramie foreshadowing of the assassination.
4.–Sergio Arcacha Smith’s numerous links to the assassination, including his possible work running guns with Jack Ruby and CIA contract agent Tomas Eli Davis.
5.–Freeport Sulphur, its networking with both Clay Shaw and David Ferrie and its ownership by the Eastern Elite.
6.–The role of Jock Whitney in Freeport Sulphur.
The publisher of The New York Herald Tribune, Whitney worked late into the evening of 11/22/1963, apparently on an editorial that featured the book The Assassins, which claimed that America’s assassinations were the work of “crazed individuals.” The book was later distributed to members of the Warren Commission by none other than Allen Dulles.

The program goes into the discovery made by researcher John Hunt of the handling of the Magic Bullet, CE399.

. . . . And the proof is that both the Warren Commission and the HSCA signed onto the ludicrous Single Bullet Theory. A theory that has been rendered even more risible today than it was in the sixties and seventies. For researcher John Hunt has proven with declassified documents that the so-called Magic Bullet was at the FBI lab in Washington at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the twenty-second. But how could this be if that bullet was not turned over by the Secret Service to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd until 8:50 p.m.? In other words, lab technician Robert Frazier had booked CE399 into his reords one hour and twenty minutes before it was given to him by agent Todd. But further, Todd’s initials were said by the FBI to be on this bullet he dropped off with Frazier that night. Hunt saw the blow up photos of the entire circumference of CE 399 at the National Archives. The FBI lied on this key issue. For Todd’s initials are not on the bullet.

All one needs to know about the efficacy of the HSCA is that it never took the time to do what John Hunt did. . . .

Eventually, the collaborationist mainstream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the committee. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post began the assault, which quickly drew blood. . . .

Guy Banister employee Tommy Baumler: ” . . . . whatever happens, the Shaw case will end without punishment for him [Shaw], because federal power will see to that.”

This is the seventeenth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this program, we proceed into New Orleans’ DA Jim Garrison’s actual trial of Clay Shaw.

Before going into the trial, per se, we highlight the “turning” of The New Orleans States-Item. This “turning” features one of the principal infiltrators into Garrison’s office, William Gurvich.

. . . . From this interview [with Tommy Baumler], what appears to have happened is that the CIA sent someone into New Orleans to impact public opinion about Garrison. This may have been occasioned by a letter forwarded to CIA HQ to Lloyd Ray of the local New Orleans office. . . . William Gurvich, now working with Shaw’s lawyers, visited the offices of The New Orleans States-Item. Ross Yockey and Hoke May had been seriously investigating the Shaw case. And they had been doing that in a fair and judicious manner. They had uncovered some interesting facts about how Gordon Novel’s lawyers were being paid. After Gurvich’s visit, the States-Item pulled Yockey and May from the Garrison beat. When this author interviewed Yockey in 1995, he said that after this, he was then assigned to covering high school football games. With the States-Item now neutralized, the coverage in New Orleans now became imbalanced. . . .

Jim titled the chapter dedicated to the trial “Anti-Climax.” It was indeed an anti-climax after Garrison was subjected to the irresistible engine of the synthesis of: the intelligence community, their lone-wolf operators infiltrating his office, those infiltrators’ networking with the intelligence community’s media hatchet men dedicated to smearing Garrison publicly, Clay Shaw’s defense team and the Justice Department.

Garrison’s investigation was subjected to an onslaught, including outright, state-sponsored terror directed at witnesses.

A synoptic overview of the witnesses and their significance:

1.–Richard Case Nagell–A U.S. intelligence operative infiltrated into Soviet intelligence, and then assigned by KGB to assassinate Oswald, whom they knew was to be a patsy in an assassination plot against JFK for which they would be blamed.
2.–Reverend Clyde Johnson–A right-wing activist who was witness to Clay Shaw and a “Jack Rubion” networking together against JFK.
3.–Aloysius Habighorst–A good New Orleans cop who was the booking officer for Clay Shaw, when Shaw volunteered that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”
4.–Edwin McGehee–One of the witnesses connecting Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Ferrie in Clinton, Louisiana.
5.–Reeves Morgan–Another of the witnesses connecting Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Ferrie in Clinton, Louisiana.

. . . . Before and during the trial, Garrison’s witnesses were being surveilled, harassed, and physically attacked. For instance, Richard Case Nagell had a grenade thrown at him from a speeding car in New York. Nagell brought the remains of the grenade to Garrison and told him he did not think it wise for him to testify at Shaw’s trial. Even though Garrison had spirited Clyde Johnson out of town and very few people knew where he was, the FBI’s total surveillance eventually paid off. He was brutally beaten on the eve of the trial and hospitalized. Aloysius Habighorst, the man who booked Shaw and heard him say his alias was Bertrand, was rammed by a truck the day before he testified. After he testified, Edwin McGehee found a prowler on his front lawn. he called the marshal, and the man was arrested. At the station, the man asked to make one phone call. The call he made was to the International Trade Mart. After he testified, Reeves Morgan had the windows shot out of his truck. What makes all this violent intimidation more startling is what Robert Tanenbaum stated to the author in an interview for Probe Magazine. He said that he had seen a set of documents that originated in the office of Richard Helms. They revealed that the CIA was monitoring and harassing Garrison’s witnesses. . . .

The violent harassment of the witnesses may be viewed against the backdrop of Tom Bethell and Sal Panzeca.

. . . . Tom Bethell had been one of the DA’s key investigators and researchers . . . . Since Garrison had designated him as his chief archivist, he had access to and control of both Garrison’s files and his most recent witness list. . . . Secretly, he met with Sal Panzeca, one of Shaw’s attorneys, and gave him a witness list he had prepared, with summaries of each witness’s expected testimony for the prosecution. . . .

Exemplifying the effective neutralizing of witnesses is the drumbeat of discreditation and intimidation of Perry Russo, a witness to Shaw and Ferrie discussing plans to assassinate JFK. By the time of Clay Shaw’s trial, Russo relented and assented to the canard that the Shaw/Ferrie assassination planning was just a “bull session.”

House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the twelfth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this program, we continue with analysis of Clay Shaw’s intelligence connection, beginning with review of his work for the Domestic Operations Division.

A fascinating intelligence involvement of Shaw’s is his work with Permindex.

. . . . The next step in the CIA ladder after his high-level overseas informant service was his work with the strange company called Permindex. When the announcement for Permindex was first made in Switzerland in late 1956, its principal backing was to come from a local banker named Hans Seligman. But as more investigation by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Henry Schroder Corporation. This information was quite revealing. Schroder’s had been closely associated with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s connections to the Schroder banking family went back to the thirties when his law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, first began representing them through him. Later, Dulles was the bank’s General Counsel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA director, Schroder’s was a repository for a fifty million dollar contingency fund that Dulles personally controlled. Schroder’s was a welcome conduit because the bank benefited from previous CIA overthrows in Guatemala and Iran. Another reason that there began to be a furor over Permindex in Switzerland was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was associated with the Third Reich, specifically Heinrich Himmler. The project now became stalled in Switzerland. It now moved to Rome. In a September 1069 interview Shaw did for Penthouse Magazine, he told James Phelan that he only grew interested in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in October 1958. Yet a State Department cable dated April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great interest in Permindex from the outset.

One can see why. The board of directors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fascist governments, people who worked the Jewish refugee racket during World War II, a former member of Mussolini’s cabinet, and the son-in-law of Hjalmar Schacht, the economic wizard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These people would all appeal to the conservative Shaw. There were at least four international newspapers that exposed the bizarre activities of Permindex when it was in Rome. One problem was the mysterious source of funding: no one knew where it was coming from. Another was that its activities reportedly included assassination attempts on French Premier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the founding member of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of former French officers who broke with De Gaulle over his Algerian policy. They later made several attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mysterious source of funding, plus the rightwing, neo-Fascist directors created another wave of controversy. One newspaper wrote that the organization may have been “a creature of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the transfer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal political-espionage activities.” The Schroder connection would certainly suggest that. . . .

His involvement with Permindex places him in the transnational corporate milieu that spawned fascism and Nazism. Key observations about Permindex and Shaw’s participation in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep political orbit of the Dulles brothers and Sullivan & Cromwell.
2.–The Permindex operational link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himmler Kreis, the industrialists and financiers who financed the workings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, who became the finance minister of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles brothers.
4.–Permindex was apparently involved with the OAS efforts to assassinate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a network including: Banister investigator Maurice Brooks Gatlin, who boasted of having transferred money to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS operative who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assassination of JFK.
5.–As discussed in FTR #’s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an early critic of the French policy in Algeria, criticizing it on the floor of the Senate in 1957.

The conclusion of the broadcast focuses largely on the CIA’s intense interest in the Garrison investigation. This interest was manifested through an agency conclave informally named “The Garrison Group.”

. . . . Helms wanted the group to “consider the possible implications for the Agency” of what Garrison was doing in “New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw. It is crucial to keep in mind the phrase: before, during, and after. As we will see, the effective administrator Helms was thinking not just of some short term fix, but of formulating a strategy for the long haul. According to the very sketchy memo about this meeting, [CIA General Counsel Lawrence] Houston discussed his dealings with the Justice Department and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA directly. [Ray] Rocca then said something quite ominous. He said that he felt “that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meeting. Since everyone must have known that Rocca had developed, by bar, the largest database on Garrison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

We note that House Select Committee on Assassinations assistant counsel Jonathan Blackmer wrote the following:

. . . . “We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.” . . . .

The program concludes with analysis of Clay Shaw’s close relationship to the Stern family of WDSU. In addition to carrying staged interviews between Oswald and Carlos Bringuier, the broadcast outlet pilloried Jim Garrison and his trial of Clay Shaw.

This is the eleventh of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this broadcast, we explore the association of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw in the context of the planning of assassination plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involvement with the intelligence community.

David Ferrie had a desk in the office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Carlos Marcello. When another of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she witnessed another Ferrie assassination schematic on November 26, 1963:

. . . . Clara looked over at Ferrie’s desk and she saw what looked like a diagram of Dealey Plaza: it was a drawing of a car from the perspective of an angle from above, the car was surrounded by high buildings, reminiscent of Dealey Plaza. After the secretary threw it out, Clara retrieved it. She said it should be given to the FBI or Secret Service. The secretary took it back and a pulling contest ensued. The secretary eventually won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the diagram. She later reconstructed this experience for Garrison. She said she came forward because she considered herself a good citizen, and Ferrie must have been something evil . . . .

After discussion of the Ferrie Dealey Plaza assassination schematic, the discussion turns to a conversation witnessed by Perry Russo, one of Garrison’s most important witnesses.

Key points of information about what Russo witnessed:

1.–Present at the meeting where the discussion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and several Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most common aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increasingly agitated and highlighted “triangulation of crossfire” as necessary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw discussed the necessity of being somewhere else, to give themselves “cover.” This led Russo to conclude that the plans were concrete not theoretical.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Hammond, LA., on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assassination.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Francisco Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assassination reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remarkably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go forward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time as curious.

The issue of Shaw’s aliases is an important one. The day after the assassination of JFK, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” requesting that he represent Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Andrews had previously encountered Shaw using the same alias when seeking legal representation for some gay Latinos.

Key aspects of Andrews’ contact with Shaw/Bertrand:

1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after calling Washington D.C., that he might get a bullet in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his testimony, Garrison charged him with perjury, eventually gaining a conviction.
3.–Andrews’ statements about Shaw/Bertrand were bolstered by someone at the VIP lounge at the Eastern Airlines terminal at New Orleans airport, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous people in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Garrison’s crackdown on organized crime-related operations in New Orleans, his potential informants remained silent.

When being booked, Shaw actually stated that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”

Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police officer named Aloysius Habighorst–who had an excellent record. When being booked, Shaw stated that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before testifying at Shaw’s trial, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yellow truck, and he was injured.

The concluding portion of the broadcast deals with Clay Shaw’s intelligence connections. Key points of information in that regard:

1.–Shaw’s intelligence connections date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to General Charles Thrasher. This placed him in the Special Operations Section, a branch of military intelligence and one which was involved with recruiting some of the Paperclip personnel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with International House, a Rockefeller-linked operation deeply involved with the transnational corporate community.
3.–His work for the International Trade Mart followed logically on the heels of his work for International House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the Mississippi Shipping Company, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indicated that Shaw’s work for CIA involved conferring with the agency before traveling to Latin America, not after he returned as was the case for most informants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.

One of the most important elements of Shaw’s intelligence career was uncovered by researcher Peter Vea, whose disclosures were supplemented by some interesting commentary by Victor Marchetti.

. . . . Peter Vea discovered a very important document while at the National Archives in 1994. Attached to a listing of Shaw’s numerous contacts with the Domestic Contact service, a listing was attached which stated that Shaw had a covert security approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, meaning that Shaw was an active covert operator for the CIA while Garrison was investigating him. When William Davy took this document to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, an interesting conversation ensued. As Marchetti looked at the document, he said, “That’s interesting . . . . He was . . . He was doing something there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert security clearance for domestic contacts service. He then added, “This was something else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the Clandestine Services.” When Davy asked what branch of Clandestine Services would that be, Marchetti replied, “The DOD (Domestic Operations Division). It was one of the most secret divisions within the Clandestine Services. This was Tracey Barnes’s old outfit. They were getting into things . . . Uh . . . exactly what, I don’t know. But they were getting into some pretty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was working for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clearance issued to him in 1970 while he was working at the White House. . . .

The tenth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this broadcast, we delve into operational links between U.S. intelligence agent David Ferrie–the first target of Garrison’s investigation–and Clay Shaw, who was tried by Garrison.

One of the operations in which Ferrie and Shaw participated was an effort to bolster Freeport Sulphur.

. . . . In Chapter 1, the author introduced Freeport Sulphur and its subsidiaries Moa Bay Mining and Nicaro Nickel. These companies all had large investments in Cuba prior to Castro’s revolution. And this ended up being one of the ways that Garrison connected Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. This came about for two reasons. First, with Castro taking over their operations in Cuba, Freeport was attempting to investigate bringing in nickel ore from Cuba, through Canada, which still had trade relations with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at another plant in Braithwaite. Shaw, an impressario of international trade, was on this exploratory team for Freeport. And he and two other men had been flown to Canada by Ferrie as part of this effort. More evidence of this connection through Freeport was found during their investigation of Guy Banister. Banister apparently knew about another flight taken by Shaw with an official of Freeport, likely Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Ferrie. Another reason this Freeport connection was important to Garrison is that he found a witness named James Plaine in Houston who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sulphur had contacted him in regards to an assassination plot against Castro. Considering the amount of money Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the number of Eastern Establishment luminaries associated with the company–such as Jock Whitney, Jean Mauze and Godfrey Rockefeller–it is not surprising that such a thing was contemplated within their ranks. . . .

One of the most important, compelling links between Ferrie and Shaw was their appearance with Lee Harvey Oswald in Clinton, Louisiana. Key points of information about this event:

1.–The three men–Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald–were in Clinton to register Oswald to vote.
2.–In the event, their arrival placed them in the middle of a large voter-registration drive for local African-Americans, part of the civil rights movement of the early ’60’s.
3.–The three men were very conspicuous at this event, not only because of their race, but because the large, black Cadillac driven by Shaw attracted considerable attention.
4.–Many of those in attendance at the voter registration drive, as well as the local sheriff, identified the three men.
5.–Ferrie, in particular, manifested a striking appearance. He was afflicted with an ailment that caused all of the hair on his body that to fall out. To cover up his affliction, Ferrie wore a garish red wig and matching, penciled-on eyebrows.
6.–Oswald was apparently at the voter registration event to register to vote in that area, in order to gain employment at the nearby East Louisiana State Hospital, an institution with strong links to Tulane Medical Center and Alton Ochsner, as well as to the MK Ultra experiments going on at that time.
7.–Two people Oswald apparently cited as references were Malcolm Pierson and Frank Silva. Not only did both men work at the hospital, but they both had interesting CV’s.

. . . . The obvious question then becomes: How did Oswald know the names of these men? Or if he did not, how did Shaw or Ferrie know them? One possibility is this: According to Cuban intelligence, Silva was active in the anti-Castro cause in the New Orleans area. Silva was Cuban-born and from an upper-class family. He was actually associated with Tulane Medical Center at the time. Tulane was located in New Orleans. Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was on the board of, and Chief of Surgery at, Tulane Medical School, was a friend of both Shaw and Banister. In fact, at the New Orleans Public Library, there is a photo of Shaw sitting at a small table with Ochsner.

Another way that Oswald could have known these names was through a mutual acquaintance of Shaw and Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith. Both Cuban intelligence and Garrison’s investigators discovered that there was a connection between the two Cuban refugees. Dr. Robert Heath, Chairman of Tulane University Medical School’s Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, became infamous for using LSD and electrode implantation in his research. Many of the people he worked on came from East Louisiana State Hospital, where an entire ward was dedicated to his work. East doctor Alfred Butterworth (whom this author interviewed shortly before his death) told the author that he had seen both Ochsner and Silva while he was there. Butterworth also revealed that Tulane University had a special psychiatric unit at the hospital, where they secretly administered LSD. This is important background to the following information. During his inquiry, Jim Garrison came across a witness who had attended a gathering at Dr. Heath’s home. Thee, the following event occurred: Dr. Silva introduced the man to the former local representative of Howard Hunt’s CRC, Sergio Arcacha Smith. Pierson was a former narcotics offender, who, according to HSCA subpoenaed records, listed Silva as a reference in his job application. It is hard to believe that, left to his own devices, Oswald would have known that either of these men worked at the hospital. If either of these more logical options is accurate, it gives the incident even more scope and depth. . . .

The program concludes with discussion of what a Garrison investigator called “The Bomb”–an apparent plan, with detailed schematics, to assassinate JFK. NB: Mr. Emory mistakenly links Clay Shaw to “The Bomb.” Shaw was, according to credible testimony involved with Ferrie in another, probably connected, association to discuss killing Kennedy.

The ninth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this interview, we proceed into the substance of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination. Garrison’s inquiry began immediately after the assassination when former Guy Banister investigator Jack Martin gave information to him about one of his cronies in the “detective agency.”

David Ferrie was a veteran intelligence officer with a long CV. Ferrie’s intelligence resume and behavior with regard the JFK assassination includes:

1.–His work with a Civil Air Patrol unit that included Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as Barry Seal, another future CIA operative who became a major player in the Iran-Contra drug traffic.
2.–Ferrie’s CAP unit’s profound relationship with the military, permitting his unit to operate at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and to fly on military aircraft. This indicates strong gravitas on Ferrie’s part within the national security establishment.
3.–His strange trip to Texas on the day of the assassination, driving all night through a heavy rainstorm to–take your pick–go ice skating and/or go goose hunting. The manager of the skating rink stated that Ferrie did not go ice skating but stayed by a pay phone all of the time he spent there. His companions stated that they did not bring guns on the trip. Ferrie spent his time in Galveston (a Texas port city) in a hotel overlooking the sea.
4.–Ferrie marketing his untenable ice skating/goose hunting story to the FBI–an act of perjury on his part.
5.–Ferrie also stated that he didn’t know how to fire a rifle, a claim fundamentally at odds with Ferrie’s work as a paramilitary commando trainer at the CIA camps at LaCombe, Louisiana.
6.–Immediately after the assassination, Ferrie frantically sought to recover any photographs of him with Lee Harvey Oswald in his CAP unit.
7.–Immediately after the assassination, Ferrie worried that his library card might be in Oswald’s possession. Oswald knew about “microdots,” a technique developed by German intelligence in World War II permitting the reduction of an intelligence communication to microscopic size, thus enabling its insertion into a period or comma in a sentence. Some researchers have opined that the library card may have involved some use of microdot technology in the Ferrie/Oswald intelligence relationship.
8.–Ferrie, Oswald and Guy Banister were all deeply involved with the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban effort in New Orleans. Banister’s office was a front for many of the weapons used by Ferrie and company at the LaCombe camp and other facilities. As discussed previously, Oswald’s one man Fair Play For Cuba Committee (New Orleans chapter) was housed in the same Newman building that housed Banister’s operation.
9.–Ferrie had operational connections with both Eladio Del Valle and Sergio Arcacha Smith, two of the CIA’s primary anti-Castro Cuban operatives.
10.–Against the background of JFK’s Cuban policy, including JFK’s actions vis a vis the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, his impending diplomatic rapprochement with Castro and the Justice Department’s closing down of the LaCombe camp and others like it, Ferrie began making increasingly violent statements about JFK.
11.–Ferrie began openly talking about killing Kennedy. His violent anti-JFK statements were one of the reasons he was dismissed from Eastern Airlines, for whom he worked as a pilot.

. . . . As Mongoose began to dwindle down, Ferrie, and others, now grew even more resentful of Kennedy. For the first time, Ferrie mentioned to a young protege a design to do away with JFK. But he never included himself in the plans. He talked about it in the second or third person. Sometimes, he went further and said that Kennedy “ought to be shot.” This was also echoed by Guy Banister who had been a CIA conduit of funds for the training camps. In 1963, Banister bitterly complained to a colleague that “someone should do away with Kennedy.” Banister’s fascist ideology was conducive to such things. . . .

After Garrison indicted him, Ferrie began publicly attacking Garrison’s credibility, ridiculing any notion of his own guilt in the assassination. In private, Ferrie began expressing fear for his life. As it developed, Ferrie’s fears were well founded. His naked corpse was found in his apartment, allegedly felled by a berry aneurism at the base of his brain. A sheet was pulled up over his face, and there were two typed suicide notes, with his name typed, not signed.

There are a number of considerations in connection with Ferrie’s death:

1.–If his death was natural, why were there two typed suicide notes?
2.–If it was suicide, how did he die?
3.–There were marks in Ferrie’s mouth, clearly revealed in autopsy photos. Might they have indicated that drugs been forced down his throat? Ferrie had been taking proloid, which might well have produced the lethal reaction Ferrie experienced in the event of an overdose. He had ordered thyroid pills, which were gone when his body was discovered.
4.–Journalist George Lardner had interviewed Ferrie, and claims he was with Ferrie until 4am, the last possible time that Ferrie’s death could have occurred. If Lardner was right, the killers must have entered within minutes of his departure.
5.–Decades later, Lardner, working for the CIA-linked Washington Post, went to Dallas to shadow Oliver Stone’s filming of “JFK,” based on Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins. Lardner then wrote a hit piece on Stone’s film before it was released.

The contents of Ferrie’s apartment were unusual. Recall that he had stated that he didn’t know how to fire a rifle.

. . . . The contents of Ferrie’s apartment at the time of his death were unusual for a private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield rifle, a Remington rifle, an altered-stock, .22 rifle, 20 shotgun shells, two Army Signal Corps telephones, one bayonet, one flare gun, a radio transmitter unit, a radio receiver unit, 32 rifle cartridges, 22 blanks, several cameras, and three rolls of film. . . .

Shortly after Ferrie’s death, his close associate Eladio Del Valle was found murdered, near the apartment of Bernardo De Torres, Bay of Pigs veteran and U.S. intelligence veteran. Del Valle had been tortured, shot through the heart and his head had been split open with a machete.

The third of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues with discussion of Cuba and JFK’s policy with regard to Castro.

(Listeners can order Destiny Betrayed and Jim’s other books, as well as supplementing those volumes with articles about this country’s political assassinations at his website Kennedys and King. Jim is also a regular guest and expert commentator on Black Op Radio.)

After reviewing discussion from FTR #1032, the program highlights the Cuban Missile Crisis. The best known of JFK’s actions with regard to Cuba, the “Thirteen Days” exemplifies how Kennedy stood against the Cold War political establishment and what President Eisenhower called “The Military-Industrial Complex,” earning the hatred of key players on the U.S. political stage at the time.

Once it became clear that the Soviets had placed offensive intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba, plans were drawn up for both air strikes to take out the missiles and a military invasion of Cuba as a whole. Kennedy was excoriated for taking a more thoughtful tack.

. . . . On October 9, Kennedy had a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawkish Air Force General Curtis LeMay. . . . LeMay frowned upon the blockade option. . . . “If we don’t do anything in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.” LeMay, who was never one to mince words, then went even further. To show his utter disdain for the blockade concept, the World War II veteran actually brought up something rather bizarre. He said, “The blockade and political action, I see leading into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.” LeMay was now comparing Kennedy’s preference for the blockade with Neville Chamberlain’s giving away the Sudetenland to the Nazis, which encouraged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not expressing themselves in such extreme figures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. . . .

Thinking that the Soviet buildup may have been a gambit to oblige the U.S. to forgo support for West Berlin in exchange for withdrawal of the nuclear forces in Cuba, Kennedy sought other alternatives. (Younger listeners should bear in mind that West Berlin was the Western-aligned half of Berlin, which was itself located deep in East Germany.)

Ultimately, Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev drew down hostilities, after Kennedy instituted a naval blockade of Soviet maritime shipments of military materiel to Cuba. Jim presents the altogether formidable order of battle in Cuba, indicating the strong possibility that, had the more aggressive U.S. contingency plans been implemented, it would have led to a Third World War and the end of our civilization.

As the elder Von Moltke observed: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Something would not have gone according to plan in the proposed military adventures against the Soviet presence in Cuba. When that happened, there would have been World War III.

. . . . The deployment included 40 land based ballistic launchers, including 60 missiles in five missile regiments. The medium range missiles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addition, there were to be 140 air-defense missile launchers to protect the sites. Accompanying then would be a Russian army of 45,000 men with four motorized rifle regiments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fighters, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Finally, there was to be a submarine missile base with an initial deployment of eleven submarines, seven of them capable of launching one megaton nuclear warheads. In addition, there were low-yield tactical nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an invasion. . . .

Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy sought to woo Castro away from the Soviet Union with a diplomatic rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S.

Using U.S. diplomat William Atwood, French journalist Jean Daniel and American journalist Lisa Howard as intermediaries, JFK was seeking to normalize U.S./Cuban relations.

The CIA and its anti-Castro Cuban contingent learned of the negotiations, and undertook a number of covert operations, such as the Pawley/Bayo/Martino raid to break up the negotiations.

Program Highlights Include:

The roles of many of the “Dramatis Personae” who figure in Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination in anti-Castro Cuban intrigue, including:

1.–David Ferrie’s work as a paramilitary trainer at camps used to train anti-Castro guerrillas and as a pilot on various “ops” against Castro.
2.–Clay Shaw’s work organizing CIA anti-Castro Cuban activities, particularly in the New Orleans area.
3.–Guy Banister’s “detective agency,” which served as a front for paramilitary operations against Castro’s Cuba and also as a cover for Lee Harvey Oswald’s role as a faux Castro supporter and Fair Play For Cuba member.
4.–Bernardo de Torres’ participation in the Bay of Pigs and subsequent anti-Castro activities, as well as his work with silenced weapons developer Mitchell WerBell and as an infiltrator into Garrison’s office.
5.–Eladio Del Valle’s work with David Ferrie, among others, and his brutal murder.
6.-Sergio Arcacha Smith’s role as a key official of the CIA front organization CRC and his links to many other figures in Garrison’s investigation.
7.–CIA officer David Atlee Phillips and his work against Castro, as well as against the U.S. Castro support group Fair Play For Cuba. In a 1988 conversation with his estranged brother shortly before his death, Phillips admitted having been in Dallas when Kennedy was killed.
8.–Future Watergate burglar James McCord’s work with Phillips against the FPCC.
9.–Antonio Veciana’s work with Alpha 66, arguably the most militant of the anti-Castro exile groups and his mysterious control officer “Maurice Bishop,” who appears to have been David Atlee Phillips.
10.–Future Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt’s collaboration with Allen Dulles and Charles Murphy on the anti-Kennedy Fortune Magazine article, as well as his work on the Bay of Pigs operation.

This broadcast is something of a “prequel” to the next two programs, both dealing with Charlottesville.

What the media have termed “Alt-Right” and the author calls “the radical right” were present at Charlottesville and participants in the assassination of JFK.

Numerous programs and articles on this website have dealt with Nazi involvement with the assassination of JFK, from paramilitary American Nazi elements to individuals and institutions overlapping the Reinhard Gehlen spy milieu.

In this program, we excerpt a recent, massive volume General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy by Jeffrey H. Caufield M.D. NB: For a seasoned researcher, this is a useful and important book, however it MUST be handicapped–the author is dismissive of the [by now recorded fact] that elements of the intelligence community were involved in the killing. Of course, they were.

Notwithstanding that significant flaw, the book features a treasure trove of information about Nazi and fascist connections to the assassination of JFK. A veteran researcher can–and should–easily take the information from Caufield’s book and collate it with the intelligence community elements with which the “radical right” individuals and institutions are affiliated.

Although not coterminous by any means, what Caufield terms “the radical right” and U.S. intelligence are profoundly connected.

This hypothetical relationship suggests the possibility of a domestic version of “Operation Stay Behind” and its Italian component, “Operation Gladio”. The above were NATO operations that utilized extreme right and fascist elements as potential guerilla forces to fight against communists in the event of either a successful Soviet takeover of Western Europe (an extreme improbability), or the greater likelihood of a popular Communist takeover of a major Western European country. In practice, Gladio resulted in a program of terrorist acts (bombings, kidnappings and assassinations) directed against the left. (Many of those acts were actually blamed on the left, in order to discredit it in the eyes of the public.)

Disturbed by the alleged lack of “backbone” demonstrated by American military personnel during the Korean War, American strategic thinkers undertook to indoctrinate the American public with a practically militant, anti-Communist perspective. These leaders feared that, in the event of a protracted nuclear face-off with the Soviets, lack of American political resolve could result in the United States “blinking” and backing down in such a confrontation.

In 1958, the Eisenhower administration issued a National Security Council directive authorizing the military to engage in a program of political indoctrination of military personnel and (more importantly) the civilian population as well. The goal of this directive was to alter the political views of the American people. The constitutional implications of this directive could not be exaggerated. The bulk of the broadcast examines evidence that suggests that, as a result of this NSC directive, the national security establishment began utilizing far-right and fascist groups in order to realize the desired ideological transformation. Mr. Emory suggests that these networks may very well have been utilized in the American political assassinations of the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as domestic intelligence operations against the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.

We begin our analysis with New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s 1967 letter to Lord Bertrand Russell, in which he noted the Nazi associations of many of the people involved with the JFK assassination.

In future programs, we will take up the issue of what Fort Sill Operations Command Officer Glenn Pinchback referred to as a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave America in the name of anti-Communism” and “a neo-Nazi plot gargantuan in scope.”

In FTR #188, we detailed the “Hate Bus,” a gambit by American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell to protest the Freedom Riders and the Civil Rights movement. It bears some structural similarity to the Charlottesville incident, with fascists staging a counter-event to a progressive demonstration, in this case the “freedom riders” bus ridden by white college students and black civil rights activists in support of integration and voting rights in the South.

Note that apparent Oswald associate Ray Leahart was the best man at the wedding of David Duke, a major participant in the Charlottesville event.

Highlighting aspects of the career of “Hate Bus” participant Ray Leahart, a New Orleans ANP [American Nazi Party] member, we note that:

1.-Leahart was alleged to have been an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. ” . . . . On December 16, 1963, after the Kennedy assassination, the New Orleans FBI investigated a tip that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen with Ray Leahart during the previous summer. Leahart was a New Orleans Nazi whom [Guy] Banister had bailed out of jail in the Hate Bus incident. . . .”
2.-The FBI had no documents on Leahart, raising the question of what happened to a document about Leahart’s arrest in the “Hate Bus” incident. (For more about the Hate Bus, see FTR #188.) Author Caufield speculates that Oswald handler Guy Banister’s close relationship with FBI SAC Regis Kennedy may have had something to do with the disappearance of Leahart’s arrest record. ” . . . . No FBI documents, other than the New Orleans police mug shots from the Hate Bus arrest, were in the FBI record, which raises the question of what happened to FBI reference 841767D (Leahart’s arrest record in the Hate Bus incident) and why it did not accompany the allegation and substantial likelihood of an Oswald-Leahart association when sent to the Warren Commission. Banister’s close friendship with New Orleans FBI SAC Regis Kennedy may have had something to do with the critical omission. . . .”
3.-Leahart was close to Dallas, Texas, ANP members, including Robert Surrey, who printed a notorious poster of JFK: ” . . . . . . . The Dallas FBI office was aware of correspondence linking Leahart to ANP [American Nazi Party] activities in Texas. One Dallas ANP member, Robert Surrey, was a close associate of General [Edwin] Walker. Surrey’s wife Mary was Walker’s personal secretary. Wealthy oilmen reportedly funded Surrey’s Nazi outfit. Surrey printed the infamous ‘Wanted for Treason’ poster which had circulated in Dallas before the association. The poster pictured mug-shot-styled photos of President Kennedy and accused him of treason. Surrey and Walker were Warren Commission witnesses, and, of course, Walker was close to both Guy Banister and Kent Courtney. . . .”
4.-Leahart was an associate of David Duke, and was best man at Duke’s wedding. ” . . . . On September 9, 1972, Leahart became the best man at Duke’s wedding. . . .”

The program then reviews Daniel Burros, one of the American Nazi Party members whose contact information was in Lee Harvey Oswald’s address book.

Burros viewed with favor veteran Nazi Edward Hunter, a Guy Banister’s associate, who had been a member of the pre-war Nazi Fifth Column in the U.S.

Burros allegedly committed suicide at the home of Pennsylvania Klan leader Roy Frankhouser, who–as seen in AFA #13–had operational links with elements of U.S. intelligence, CIA in particular.

Frankhouser also infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, an organization so infiltrated by spooks and fascists that it was little more than a right-wing front organization. (The SWP was the ideological petri dish in which Lyndn LaRouche and Bernie Sanders were cultured.)

Note that Frankhouser was apparently in possession of correspondence from Michael and Ruth Paine, two “liberal” babysitters of Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife. Both Michael and Ruth Paine had strong links to the national security establishment.

Fleshing out the continuity between the Nazi Fifth Column of the pre-World War II period and what author Caufield termed the “radical right” and by contemporary observers as “the alt-right,” we excerpt John Roy Carlson’s Under Cover. Note that Edward Hunter was an associate of Guy Banister’s. (Banister was one of Oswald’s apparent intelligence handlers.)

Gerhard Frey was the editor of the Deutsche National Zeitung und Soldaten Zeitung, which had veterans of the SS and Goebbels’ propaganda bureau on its editorial staff. The publication received financial support from the CIA.

A financier of contemporary Russian fascist Vladimir Zhironovsky, Frey was associated with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.

Formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, that organization is a consortium of Eastern European Third Reich subsidiaries such as the Ukrainian OUN/B, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Bulgarian National Front, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Croatian Ustachi, the Slovakian Hlinka Party and others. The unifying element in these fascist organizations was the SS. The ABN became a key element of the Gehlen organization and the GOP.

Both Frey and General Charles Willoughby were associated with the ABN.

General Charles Willoughby was also tight with the ABN, and its founder Jaroslav Stetzko, the head of Ukraine’s Nazi collaborationist government. (The spelling of Stetzko’s name varies with the transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet.) In numerous programs, we have discussed Stetzko, his wartime genocidal operations, his and the ABN’s links to the Gehlen organization, the GOP, the CIA and the Underground Reich.

An element of continuity between the wartime regime of Jaroslav Stetzko and the present OUN/B successor organizations in Ukraine is Roman Svarych.

Roman Svarych was Stezko’s personal secretary in the early 1980’s. He became Ukraine’s minister of justice (the equivalent of Attorney General) under Yuschenko, and held the same post under both Timoshenko governments. Svarych then became an adviser to Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko and is the chief spokesman for the Azov Battalion. (We highlight Stetzko/Stetsko in numerous programs–use the search function with the alternate spellings to flesh out your understanding.)